Enter the fotdella

Many, many, many years ago I bought a record (yes, one of those big black flat round plastic things yer grandma used to listen to music on before she got an iPod like a civilized human being) by Tav Falco. On the back cover of this rockabilly oddity, the legendary Jim Dickinson was credited with playing something called a "fotdella". What's a fotdella, you ask? For more years than I care to mention, I wondered the same thing. Often I imagined it was a sort of flatulent rhythm instrument, possibly played with a bellows. Anyway, this morning I finally looked it up on Google and, much to my surprise, actually found an answer.

The fotdella is a stringed bass that you play with one of your feet using a crude keyboard. Oddball bluesman Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller invented it for his one man band. [Note to self: Look for some Jesse Fuller MP3s, pronto. I must hear the fotdella played by the master.]

So now that I know what a fotdella is, I want one. In fact, I believe I was born to play the fotdella. Where can I get one? So far my search for an online fotdella dealer has been fruitless, but did find a guy who had made an improved model. Ah, but my fotdella dreams are sure to be dashed.

Victoria Regina Tarot

The Victoria Regina Tarot is a tarot deck made entirely by collaging 19th century engravings. It's somewhat like (but nowhere near as marvelously strange as) Max Ernst's surrealist collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté. (A book I still don't own, even though I first saw it more than ten years ago.)

The bad thing about the Victoria Regina Tarot is that it's out of print. But the illustrations of each card seem to be viewable at the site.

They're inflatable!

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Such disappointment

There was some kind of fire near my job last night. All night we could smell wood smoke in the warehouse because the fans in the ceiling were sucking it in. The smell gradually died down so that it wasn't that noticeable, but around 6 AM it suddenly got strong again and I could actually see smoke haze in the air inside the warehouse. I wondered if the smoke alarms would go off. Then I wondered if the sprinklers would go off. That would've been interesting, but, sadly, it didn't happen. Fun stuff never happens at work.

What?!

This morning my boss was yammering on about something or other (I wasn't really listening) and she said what sounded like, "I couldn't get my bowels to move." I suddenly looked up at her and thought, "Did she just say what I think she said? And, if so, why in the name of all things decent is she telling me?" Then I realized she'd said, "I couldn't get my mouse to move." She was having computer problems in the new area where she's got her office set up.

Postal humor

Contained in this mashed box is the best deal I ever got on Ebay. For a mere $20.83 I snagged a Schick adjustable injector in the original case, a razor I've seen go for over a $100 more than once. There were also six other vintage razors, one of which was also in its original case. Of course both cases were smashed. (That's plastic for you.) Thankfully the razors weren't damaged.

The seller put a big label on the box reading, "Handle With Care", but they would've been better off with a label reading, "Please crush this box with some big heavy shit!" Jackasses.

The Chuck Yeager of stupid

Does stupid have a terminal velocity? I'm beginning to think I'm on the brink of finding out.

Last night at work as I left to go to lunch, I somehow managed to lock myself out of the office. Naturally, no one had a key. That's not as surprising as it may seem since there's only half a dozen people on third shift. So a supervisor from the only other populated office and a security guard did much poking and proding with various implements in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the office. I just stood there like a big doofus and ate my lunch since I'd already achieved professional levels of stupidity by locking myself out in the first place. Eventually someone showed up with a screwdriver and we took the damn door off the hinges.

I'd like to say that locking myself out of the office was a rare occurance, but last Friday I locked myself out of my car. So, it begins... Next I'll suddenly find myself out in public with no pants on.

Vacant

Monkey Chow!

The Monkey Chow Diaries: "On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: 'a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.'" [via Metafilter]

Who knew there was such a thing as Monkey Chow?

The Monster Show

In the comments of my "Monsters want our women" post I mentioned a book I read a few years ago that had interpretations of horror movies from the silent era to the present. The title's The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror and there's even an official site.

Stupid comics

I love websites about old comics, particularly if the old comics in question are seriously fucked up. So much time was happily wasted when I found Stupid Comics a few weeks ago. How stupid are they? Pretty stupid. And in one sequence Dick Cheney makes a surprise appearance.Women of the world, I don't let Dick Cheney carry you back to his lair!

Monsters want our women!

A few weeks ago I watched Creature from the Black Lagoon again. I wasn't planning on watching much of it, but I ended devouring the whole thing instead of napping like I'd wanted. (I live for napping.)

It's a great monster flick, but it made me wonder why it was that in so many of these types of movies the monster killed the men and carried the women away? What were the monsters going to do with the women? I, and all the other straight men watching Creature from the Black Lagoon, know what we'd like to do to Julie Adams, but did the gill-man harbor similar urges? Apparently, he did, but it's never mentioned in the movie at all. There's no scene where any of the male characters say anything like, "The monster wants a mate, so we better lock up whatshername and tell her to stop jiggling around in that bathing suit." But the original movie posters leave nothing to the imagination. One states bluntly, "Terrifying monster of the ages raging with pent-up passions! ...with every man his mortal enemy ...and a woman's beauty his prey!" And on another poster, "Centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart!"

So, in the 50's there was this deep-seated fear that monsters would be canoodling our womenfolk? I thought the 50's was all about commies. You know, commies canoodling our womenfolk. (Oddly, in the poster for one of the two Black Lagoon sequels, The Creature Walks Among Us, the monster appears to be wearing pants while on his rampage in some big US city after he escapes his captors. I can imagine a scene where the guy running the zoo/freak show/whatever says something like, "Somebody put some pants on that thing!" Of course he ran around nekkid all through the first movie.)

So monsters do want out women! Somebody should make a website about this! Oh, look, they already have. At least two of them actually. Giants and Girls [not all safe for work] is devoted to monsters, aliens, mutants, etc. chasing and carrying away beautiful women. Lots of nice galleries if you just stick to the old movie stills and ignore the creepy computer "erotic" art. It's more of fetish site than a purely movie buff site, but interesting none the less. The other site, In My Arms, is devoted to the "carry phenomenon", which is basically just monsters, aliens, robots, mutants, and just regular old run of the mill human men carrying unconscious women. Needless to say, this is also a bit of a fetish site and probably not all safe for work.

Filler!

Since I've fallen into a bottomless pit of work-related misery and have the energy of a drugged tree sloth, I haven't been blogging much. My job sucks, but it doesn't even suck in an interesting way. Don't hold your breath for wacky posts about how stupid things are at work. So in lieu of actual content, here's my latest collection of stupid search requests that people baffled by the internet have used to blunder across my tedious blog:

free latin porn without popups
I'm pretty sure they were looking for porn featuring folk from Central and South America, but I like to imagine they were looking for porn in Latin, because nothing says arousing like a dead language.

cat smash through window
Just when you thought Fluffy couldn't be any more annoying.

tickling vagina clips
Movie clips or clips that would actually tickle one's vagina? But you'd think clips would pinch rather than tickle. OK, I've dwelled on this far too long already.

hee haw women doing
This searcher doesn't care just what the Hee Haw women are doing, just that they're doing something: movies, yard work, hard time, etc. It doesn't matter as long as they're keeping busy.

"wanking in front of"
Wanking in front of anything: cars, elephants, bricks, trees, Communism, tropical fish, lawn furnature, etc. The searcher doesn't care as long as someone is wanking in front of something.

good teacher porn clips lengthy and free
I never had a teacher that good.

free foreskin sites with photos
I don't want a free foreskin!

man wanking in front of computer
Well, at least he wasn't wanking in front of a dehumidfier. Or something like that.

does going to the toilet relieve stress
For me it does. Unless someone's in there and then my stress increases.

pee shy successful medication
See above.

uk wanking blogs
The searcher isn't interested in wanking blogs from any other lousy country.

Honey Bun robbery
Was a honey bun stolen in the robbery or used to perform the robbery?

eel barrel
More fun than a barrel of eels!

toilet lid cartoon
A cartoon about a toilet lid or a cartoon on a toilet lid?

undulate paragraph
I hope this is a new feature in Word.

john wayne autopsies
More than one?

english majors are stupid annoying
Possibly, but I'm not comfortable with gross generalizations.

"shoot a woman in the ass"
I really have no idea.

invented the spanking
Sadly, we'll never know.

What is going on in Iceland now reffering to the headlines of articles in the newspaper.
This just in: People in Iceland speak a language called Icelandic.

bubblegum blowing porn
Talk about your lame fetishes. Somewhere out there a person is desperately searching Yahoo for "cuddling porn" or "non nude porn".

enema horror stories
Get a mop!

photos of kids 11-12 with shaved heads
Hmmm... Pervert or a kid looking for photos to show his parents? ("See, Mom. There's kids my age with shaved heads!")

Boohbah Zone

I can't stop playing with this.

Mit der whoopie!

I learned something new at work: furzkissen is German for whoopie-cushion. (We stock them.) Anyway, I looked up furzkissen on Google just to see what came up. I found an article in the German verions of Wikipedia. The Google translation is too good not to reproduce in total:

A Furzkissen is a joke article. This concerns an inflatable hollow body, which consists of plastic, and over a valve it is so fillable that the air filling cannot withdraw after filling independently. When sudden escaping of air by an outside load a flatulenzartiges noise is produced. The Furzkissen serves for, notionless humans who itself unintentionally on it-set and thus by its weight the necessary pressure apply to bring in embarrassment. It is put down for example camouflaged on seat opportunities.

The first Furzkissen consisted of two equal, ballonförmigen rubber skins, which were stuck up to the opening in the place at the edge, typical for a balloon. There the gap developed, by which the Furzkissen is filled, and which could be squeezed together due to its detention characteristics, so that the filling remained containing.

Furzkissen of newer date are manufactured frequently with foam material filling and a mechanical valve. If the pressure is reduced to the hollow body, then the foam material filling relaxes and leads to the fact that the Furzkissen takes up air over the valve again and so that a renewed emptying with side effects mentioned without intervention of the user becomes possible. Also fast successions of the developing noise are in this way possible.

According to the Guinness book of the records took place in Illinois with 3164 persons the largest common Furzkissen seats.

The Germans seem to take whoopie-cusion technology quite seriously. I've never seen any of these more advanced whoopie-cusion designs they speak of.

Oddly, the English version of Wikipedia has no specific article on whoopie-cushions, but they do have a nice one on flatulence humor. (While you're at it, they have a nice article on flatulence as well.)

And to digress slightly, who wouldn't want their child to wear a whoopie-cushion costume for Halloween?

Get a job

Since I'm so miserable in my current job, I decided to start searching the various online employment sites for something else. I have a degreee, so surely there's something halfway decent out there for me. Right? Well, maybe not. All the jobs seemed to want years of experience I don't have and can't get because the jobs require experience. AARRGGHH! But I did find one that I think I'm qualified for:

The employee's activities primary include processing and preparing paperwork, assisting in preparation of human remains for cremation, assisting with placing remains in cremation chamber/retort and facility cleaning and maintenance. Activities may be in a crematory or at a funeral home/crematory. Requires learning and familiarization with SCI policies and proceedures, including review of SCI operations Manual and applicable state/provincial law. Regulatory certification may be required in some states/provinces. Works under general supervision.

I'm not sure what "SCI" stands for. Maybe Scary Corpse Industry.

I don't know why I even bother getting out of bed anymore.

Chain of fools

A big site devoted entirely to chain letters? How come I've never seen this before? I know I've looked at damn near everything on the internet (because have no life), so you'd think I'd have seen it before.

Grazing the con

I took the blog on the road this weekend. Well, kinda. Sherri and husband went to RavenCon in Richmond, so I went up to meet them. Since my sister lives up there, I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal to go up one day, stay overnight, come back the next day, and go to work. Of course it didn't go quite so smoothly.

The bus was supposed to leave at 10:30 AM saturday. By 10:35 the bus was nowhere to be seen. Then we got news that it had broken down in Greensboro. Typical. This basically screwed up everything. So much for my tight schedule. I ended up waiting for two hours for a replacement bus to show up.

In Richmond, hours later, my sister (who for some reason stayed at the bus station to meet me rather than leaving my two hour late ass there) and I walked to her new apartment. Oh, and it was pouring down rain. Also, her apartment was almost two and half miles away. And I had no umbrella, only a light jacket with a very non-waterproof hood.

After walking forever, we paused in front of 7-11. My sister said, "If you want anything to eat, you better get it here because I don't have any food in the apartment." Lovely. We both got sandwiches. The guy behind the counter put everyone's purchases in plastic bags except mine, which went into a paper bag. Yeah, it's funny giving the soaking wet guy a paper bag.

By the time we got to her apartment and out of the soaking wet shoes and socks it was kind of too late to go the convention. So that meant I wouldn't get to gawk at chunky girls in chainmail bikinis and snicker at bad costumes. Crap. And I brought my camera for nothing.

I called Sherri and had a difficult conversation because cellphones suck and conventions are too damn noisy for phone conversations. We decided to just get together at their hotel and have some takeout.

So after six, we met at their hotel where a lot of the convention folk were staying. Sherri's already covered part of this episode at her blog, so I'll try to touch on the stuff she didn't mention.

I was totally exhausted by this time and had only slept maybe an hour in the previous 24, but it didn't really start to hit me until after we'd talked about an hour. I was really starting to get out of it. My eyes would close and I would immediately start dreaming, then jerk awake.

We talked a lot about god knows what. There was another girl there whose name I can't remember. She had three pairs of Doc Martins for some reason. There was Chinese food. I had beef lo mein, which I'd never eaten. Quite good. Sherri gave me a pen that lights up in different colors and had the word "Gatorland" on it. Sherri's husband Jay was making a ridiculously intricate ring out of wire. Sherri and my jewelry-making sister talked about making jewelry quite a bit while I struggled to stay awake. At one point, I found myself face down on the bed and Jay was giving me a massage. (He's a masseuse, among other things.) I've never had a massage before and never really wanted one, unless of course it was given to me by a beautiful naked girl covered in oil, but that's another story. I was too tired to be tense, so giving me a massage at that point was probably like massaging a rump roast. (Speaking of which.)

Eventually the evening wound down and we left. Outside the hotel two guys had a slow light saber fight in front of a shuttle-bus. I wanted to take a picture, but I was too tired to bother.

The guy driving our taxi was from Africa, I think. I couldn't figure out why there was no bulletproof window between us and the driver like the ones I'd always seen on TV and the movies, but we didn't rob him, so it didn't matter.

Back at my sister's apartment I slept on the cat hair-covered futon. The next morning I ate Pringles for breakfast.

Later at home I passed out on my bed and didn't wake up until about five minutes before I usually leave for work. I quickly got dressed and left. Somehow I managed to stay awake the whole night. Well, kinda.

So, how was your weekend?

Out of touch

This morning my supervisor (who works first shift, while I work third) asked me, "What's the date? Is it the 12th?" I glanced at the date on my watch and said, "It's the 19th." She's a week behind everyone else; this explains so much.

Woot!

I heard today that my former writing teacher, Claudia Emerson, just won the Pulitzer. It's about time someone I know actually did something that wasn't lame, boring, or simply embarrassing.

Hare today, gone tomorrow

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I forgot. It doesn't matter anyway now because he's now in Chocholate Rabbit Heaven as of early this morning. Sad really. Actually, I don't care.

Stoopit name

OK, I've got the intellectual stuff out of the way with the previous post, so now it's time for something really stupid.

A few days ago I was walking through the parking lot at work and noticed the car beside mine had Kumho brand tires. Kumho? Is that actually pronounced, cum ho? Did no one even toy with the idea of changing the name of this brand for the US market? Didn't anyone even consider that the brand name would basically be a filthy joke?

Nope, I don't want a set of those on my Buick, thank you.

Beckett's voice again

The 100th year since Samuel Beckett's birth was yesterday, so I suppose it's time for another tedious Beckett post. Actually, this one's sort of interesting. Sort of.

The always interesting Ask Metafilter has a post asking the question, Are there any extant recordings of Samuel Beckett's voice?. So far there's no answers that excite me, although there's a link to a 150 MB .avi of Not I.

I've previously written about my search for Beckett recordings here, here, here, and here.

The most exciting bit of information I've turned up in a long time was actually found in my own damn comments about twenty minutes ago. In the next to the last post I mentioned above, I just saw an anonymous comment I'd overlooked left by someone in 2004 with a UK email address:

There is a recording of Beckett's voice on VHS: "Peephole Art: Beckett for Television" it was put out by Global village NY telephone 212 925-7751

I don't know if this still works

The British library in London also had (has?) a sample from this film on its Voicebox in the foyer

Beckett for Television is available, but for a terrifying $45. (Don't the people who put these things out realize that cheapskates want this stuff, too?) The description doesn't seem to mention a recording of Beckett himself. It's also available (and described) here.

Stoopit ad

I saw a strange banner ad over the weekend. It wasn't as strange as past ones I've seen, but it was still kind of odd. Western Union is holding some kind of contest, but they chose an illustration that not only doesn't quite make any sense, it's also vaguely obscene. I can understand the guy wearing a crown because he's just won a million dollars, but why is he holding yarn? Why does the yarn look weirdly like a penis? And I don't even want to get into the knitting needles jabbed into the nuts of the yarn dong. (Wasn't The Nuts of the Yarn Dong the title of an old Marlon Brando movie from the very early 60's?) Is he also giving me the finger? Or is that a thumbs up? Or maybe it's that stupid sign language gesture that's like a thumbs up, but with the pinky extended as well. It's usually displayed by morons trying to be cool while screaming, "WOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

But now that I think about it, if I won a million dollars, I wouldn't have any trouble at all strolling around town wearing a crown at a jaunty angle, holding a huge dildo in one hand, and flipping the bird with the other.

Philosophical distillation

To pass the time at work during those long periods where I either have nothing to do, or just don't want to do anything, I have a collection of books in a folder on my computer that I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg. It's an odd assortment of novels, short story collections, children's books, sappy poetry, marriage and hygiene manuals, religious texts, and studies of criminal behavior. I sometimes play with these texts using things like Find and Replace, sometimes I randomly cull senteces from various volumes and put them together into incoherent collages of prose, and sometimes I even read them.

Last night while bored out of my cotton picking mind, I started playing around with a few volumes using Find and Replace, but I quickly got bored. Then I remembered that Word has a fascinating, but ultimately quite useless tool called AutoSummarize. I tried it on the marriage manual and got some vaguely amusing results. Then I loaded up Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I ended up setting AutoSummarize to its absolute minimum setting:

propositions.

proposition. proposition. 4.12 Propositions

proposition. propositions. proposition.

proposition. propositions.

propositions.

I've never read Tractatus even a fifth of the way through, but this condensation seems quite accurate to me.

Gainful employment

This morning at work I was looking at a listing of various products we distribute and saw an odd abbreviation. I got up and went out into the warehouse to one of the production areas to actually see the product in question. I found it quickly enough. The box label read, "Squishy Potty Putty". I opened the box and saw little plastic toilets. On the lid of the toilet was a label with a cartoon of a horrified man being confronted with a dung-filled toilet. This is the kind of item I exhaust myself moving from one place in the warehouse to another.

The box label also had the name of the product in French: "Toilette avec Excréments", which I found amusing for some reason. And if you don't know, avec means with.

Also, while looking for an example of this fine product online, I found out that what we in the US call Silly Putty, people in the UK inexplicably call Potty Putty.

Some of the other wholesome, tasteful products we distribute are joke fart horns, fake vomit, and fake doggie poop.

And for no reason, here's a link to a site with pictures and video of people with too much time on their hands dropping a 50 pound ball of Silly Putty off a multi-story parking garage.

Why don't we do it in the road?

As I lurched home from another tedious night's work, I came upon a strange scene. I saw what appeared to be a bird simply sitting in the road furiously flapping its wings. Actually, I wasn't sure if it was a bird at all. Perhaps it was just something flapping in the wind, but, no, it was a bird. Why was it simply sitting in the road, ignoring my oncoming car? It suddenly it flew away revealing a second bird. This bird seemed dazed and didn't fly away as I drove past, missing it only by a few feet. What was going on? Then I realized the birds were having sex right there in the goddamn road.

They were cardinals, if you're interested in that sort of thing. It doesn't really improve the story knowing what kind of birds they were, but I just thought I'd let you know since someone with even less of a life than I have is bound to ask. But the story's not that interesting anyway.

Now if they'd been Cardinals, then it would be a really interesting story, but only if they were in full regalia.

Overdue

I haven't done one of these idiotic seach request posts in a year probably. I'm just too lazy. Or busy. Or something. Anyway, here's another lame collection of stupid search requests people have made to end up at my humble blog.

HAIR STUCK THROAT
It must be bad if it's affected the language center of your brain so severely.

hair stuck in throat
It's an epidemic, but I still don't have a useful solution.

korean sticky bun cartoon merchandise
Oh, please, god, let this exist.

did hitler eat chocolate
Looking for a subject for your doctoral dissertation?

chimpanzee cooked alive photo
I'm curious, but I don't want to be.

gigantic wiener
Wow, you're really at the wrong website because, you know, my member's very tiny.

mules + jackass art
Are they paintings of mules and donkeys or by mules and donkeys? If it's the later, put me on the waiting list.

album covers with robot holding tree limb
There's more than one album cover with a robot holding a tree limb? Other than the Tennessee Ernie Ford one, I can't think of any others. Oh, yeah, the Barbara Streisand album. I forgot.

odd smelly marsupial
I think that pretty much covers all marsupials, doesn't it? Although, I've only ever smelled an opossum, so I shouldn't make gross generalizations.

sucker sticks,stuck in throat
God, more than one? Be more careful. And Google isn't a doctor. You need a trained medical professional, not the asinine ramblings of some dork with a blog.

big ass spankings
Are the best kind of spankings. It's money in the bank. The spanking bank. Heh-heh.

men with men naked pichers only of men
So, you're looking for pictures of men? Just men. Naked ones. Right?

birds poo damaged my car paint
This seach came from Australia. You'd think they'd have more important things to worry about in a land where virtually every bug and animal there can kill your ass.

"dukes of hazzard" and "uncle jesse" and "whip" and fiction
This searcher was watching an entirely different show than the rest of us on Friday nights back in the early 80's.

"wanking for fun"
As opposed to what, wanking for profit? I'd be rich!

wanking in front of japanese
I can't imagine it would be that different from, say, wanking in front of Albanians. Or even Icelandic folk.

My hometown

Earlier this week while procrastinating in front of my computer at work, I discovered that there was a Wikipedia article about my hometown. The final sentences of the "Demographics" portion of the article are my favorite: "Many Danvillians just sit around collecting checks from the government, and not doing much of anything. It's been all downhill since 1865."

Update 4/16/06: It's gone now. Ah, Wikipedia, such a warzone of opinion.

Dammit

Damn you to hell, cactus dick man!

Working for the man

I hate my job. No surprise there, many of us hate our jobs, but most bloggers don't have jobs where they have to crawl around inaccessible areas and move tons of boxes of dusty garbage no one wants to buy from one part of a warehouse to another. (God, did anyone really think that all this King Kong merchandise would sell?) And I'm an office worker. Oh, and did I mention that I'm third shift this week, so I get to do all the above at 3:30 AM.

Last night I checked my work email and my boss left me the following cryptic message:

There is no easy to move the inventory the process sometime seems length but the end result will come together. Follow the protocol move the items into location and make the Inventory moves accordingly. Please make sure that all inventories are moved. You guys are doing a good job we must stay on top of high movers you are able to make the moves if you guys stay focused.

Yes, this bizarre missive was written by the person who tells me what to do. Those thousands of dollars of my own money I spent on tuition was well spent I must say.

Milestone or millstone?

Earlier today I passed the 50,000 hits mark. Sady, there's no prize for the person who was the 50,000th visitor to this blog. I'd be more excited by reaching this milestone if the majority of my traffic over the past two or three months weren't jackasses finding that stupid picture of cactus dick man while doing an innocuous image search.

The endless slog of existence

I haven't been able to work up enough enthusiasm to do any posting here recently.

And I had a birthday yesterday, so I'm not too happy about being all old and everything.

Also, I was informed yesterday that I would have to work third shift all next week.

So bite me.

RIP, Buck

Continuing my recent Hee-Haw-related posts, I just read that Buck Owens died today.

Eeph aaph

I've mentioned before about how on Saturday nights we'd watch Hee-Haw when I was little. Eventually I quit watching this show and started listening to proper music like DEVO that better spoke to my special needs, but I digress. Back to Hee-Haw, dammit.

They had a guy on Hee-Haw named Jimmy Riddle (which is also, oddly enough, cockney rhyming slang for pissing) who basically made a career of going "Eeph-aaph! Eeph-aaph!" in various permutations. Very retarded, but sort of entertaining. Anyway, NPR did a piece on him and the "the Lost Art of Eephing". In the article, eephing is described as, "the hillbilly equivalent of the hip-hop human 'beat box'."

I'd forgotten completely about Riddle until a couple of months ago I was watching TV early one morning and caught an infomercial for Hee-Haw DVD's and saw him having an eephing fit of some sort.

The only reason I'm even doing this post on eephing at all is to encourage everyone to go read the NPR piece and listen to some of the sound clips they have. "Little Eefin' Annie" may be familiar to some of you and it's so seriously messed up that it's worth listening to, but I really want you to hear the demented "'Eephunky' Remix". There's also a "eephing tutorial" recorded by Riddle himself.

The other one

Here's the other drawing of the bald, pipe-smoking crossdresser from the weird 19th century we never get to hear about.

Oh, my aching brain

No, I haven't died or been dragged off by giant frogs to mate horribly with their giant frog females to bring about a horrible mutant race of frogmen, I've just been diligently working at my job. And by diligently I mean involuntarily. Dang, I hate my job. Anyway, on to the blog-post.

My sister's recent post on vintage graffiti she found in a book reminds me of some strange drawings I found years ago in an ancient Bible I bought at a thrift store. The Bible was printed in 1864 and has a handwritten inscription dated 1869, but the most interesting thing about this book are drawings of bald women in hoop skirts smoking pipes.

These drawings are the types of things that may cause a concerned teacher to ask, "Is everything OK at home?" Or maybe the teacher would just drag the kid in front of the class and savagely paddle his/her ass with a freshly cut pine board. They had to cut this kind of nonsense out early or it could lead to even worse things like self-pollution or even dancing.

Maybe grandma strolled around with no wig on and smoked a pipe. Hell, maybe dad strolled around in a dress. These types of scenarios never turn up in those sappy, sentimental made for TV movies about American life in the 1800's.

I like how the arms are straight out as if the bald, hoop-skirt wearing, pipe-smoker were sleepwalking. Imagine coming upon that on your way to the outhouse at three o'clock in the morning.

This took way too much time to write

A meme-type thing cribbed from the one and only Leptard-type thing.

Pick ten bands and answer questions about them afterwards.

1. Television
2. New York Dolls
3. Wilco
4. Velvet Underground
5. Led Zeppelin
6. Black Flag
7. Sonic Youth
8. Yardbirds
9. XTC
10. Dead Kennedys

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
Rise Above

What is your favorite album of 8?
Oddly, it isn't Roger the Engineer, but Cumular Limit, a hodgepodge of live tracks, demos, outtakes, and rough mixes from the Jimmy Page era. There's also a neato black and white video included of them playing live circa 1967 on a German TV show called Beat Beat Beat (or something like that).

What is your favourite lyric that 5 has sung?
Zeppelin wasn't exactly known for their lyrics, but I'd have to pick Dazed and Confused which, oddly enough Jimmy Page basically ripped off during the Yardbirds era from a guy named Jake Holmes, but Zeppelin changed the lyrics. Also, on the Yardbirds album above there's an earlier live version of this song with different lyrics than the Zeppelin version. Confused yet? How about dazed?

How many times have you seen 4 live?
None. They basically stopped being relevant when I was one year old after Lou Reed left to go solo. Yes, I could've seen them during their sad reunion tour opening for U2 in some goddamn stadium, but that wouldn't have been enjoyable at all I don't think.

What's your favorite song of 7?
Hey Joni probably.

What is a good memory you have considering the music of 10?
My sister coming home from visiting some college with a friend and their family and bringing home a French import copy of In God We Trust, Inc. It was vinyl (this was 1984) and neither of us had ever seen a 12 inch 45 rpm record before so we just assumed that it would played at 33 1/3 rpm. So we ended listening to it, and totally loving it, at the wrong damn speed for a week probably. We'd play it two or three times a day. But what did we know, we were just a couple of stupid redneck kids listening to BIG CITY PUNK RAWK! Plus everything on the label was in French. Anyway, eventually one of us said, "Hey, maybe this isn't on the right speed."

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?
Yes, all of them. Or most of them. Except for a few tunes, Wilco isn't exactly a peppy, happy bunch, which is probably why they appeal to me so much.

What is your favourite lyric that 2 has sung?
It's hard to beat Jet Boy:

Jet Boys fly
Jet Boys gone
Jet Boy stole my baby

Actually, now that I think about it, Frankenstein has better lyrics:

Is it a crime, is it a crime
For you to fall in love in with Frankenstein
Wrong, could it be wrong
Baby, don't you want a friend
Well, Frankenstein, oh, Frankenstein, Frankenstein
You're gonna get it, you're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, from Frankenstein

What is your favorite song by 9?
Probably Senses Working Overtime, but it's just too hard to chose just one XTC tune.

How did you get in to 3?
I was watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien to see a Winona Ryder interview and Wilco, who I'd only vaguely heard of, was the musical guest. They did How to Fight the Loneliness which I really liked, so I got a copy of Summerteeth. For some reason the album didn't strike me as that interesting and for two or three years all I'd ever play was How to Fight the Loneliness. Eventually, because I kept reading stuff about them, I got the CD out and started playing it. For awhile there I played everyday.

What was the first song you heard by 1?
I don't know. For some reason I think it may have been See No Evil.

What is your favourite song by 4?
Heroin, maybe. Or perhaps Some Kinda Love

What is a good memory you have concerning 2?
Nothing comes to mind, except discoving how catchy Jet Boy is.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad?
No. Not even Still I'm Sad. Well, maybe some of the studio versions of stuff from the Jimmy Page era makes me sad because it's so inanely produced. It's a shame they didn't have management and producers during that period to capture the loud-ass brutality of their live stuff and BBC session material done during the same time.

What is your favourite album of 5?
The first one.

What is your favourite lyric that 3 has sung?
Either Poor Places or Handshake Drugs.

What is your favourite song of 6?
Again I'll chose Rise Above. Or maybe their debut single, Nervous Breakdown.

Two dreams

In the first dream I found myself in the middle of a protest that was about to become a riot and I, naturally, wanted to take some pictures of what was going on rather than actually take part. I didn't have a camera, but I did, for some odd reason, have a can of spray paint. So I started taking pictures by holding the spray paint can up to my eye and pressing the spray top thingy. The paint spraying out at what I aimed at was somehow recording images. It seemed so logical at the time. But I do remember leaving so I could hurry home and get a real camera.

The second dream kind of infuriates me because I remember so little of it. I was reading a novel by Paul Auster and somehow simultaneously watching a movie version of the same book. Auster's my favorite living writer and this dream novel and movie was almost exactly like one of his strange, convoluted novels. Of course I remembered virtually none of what happened after I woke up.

Krapp's last chance

In an act of desparation, I sent an email to James Knowlson, author of an aclaimed Samuel Beckett biography and founder of the Beckett International Foundation, asking if he knew of any recordings of Beckett's voice. Much to my surprise, he wrote back the next day. There's a recording of Beckett reading his story, "Lessness," but you can only listen to it (not copy it) at the above foundation, which is in Reading, UK. He also said there were some other recordings, but they're in private hands. So, basically, there's recordings, but I either can't hear them or I'd have to travel all the way to England to hear them.

That can't be all there is, can it?

File under, Bad Company Names

Saturday I was filling up the Buick with overpriced gas and saw a truck drive up with PMS painted on the doors. Apparently it stood for something like Piedmont Machine Systems, but you'd think they would know that people are going to think of something else entirely when they see those three letters.

And, no, a woman wasn't driving.

In lieu of actual content

My sister wants me to post the picture of the family in the nude suits, but I can't bring myself to do it. So, instead, I'll just link to it. It's not quite safe for work, but it's more stupid than obscene. No real nudity, but Jebus is it freaky.

I have no idea what the hell those people were thinking, where that picture originally came from, or if the authorities took their children away. I just don't know.

My deepest appologies

One of the great things about having a blog is the potential to completly ick out people from all over the world. Of course I don't have the international readership I once did, but I can still ick out a nice selection of the blog-reading populace. OK, I'm exaggerating. I have the potential to ick out about four or five people. Maybe.

Anyway, I had a sort of icky quasi-erotic dream last night. I debated about whether or not I should recount this gross dream, but I've decided it's just too stupid and far too vile to keep to myself.

So what happened in this dream? Brace yourself. I also suggest not eating while you read this. I was giving Roseanne Barr a full body shave. She was naked and extraordinarily shaggy, even more shaggy than I, and I'm practically a sasquatch. I wasn't shaving her naughty bits, I was shaving her back, and sides. Possibly her legs. Mainly I remember dark hair on pale flesh. The odd thing was that I was using a disposable razor rather than one of the cool vintage double-edge razors I've been collecting and using lately. Of course if I'd ended up shaving Roseanne Barr in real life with one of my cool vintage double-edge razors I doubt I'd ever bring myself to use it again, despite the fact that some of the razors I've bought were so hellishly nasty I suspect they were once owned by a zoo and were used to prepare baboons for breeding purposes. But I digress. Actually, I'm not digressing because that was pretty much the whole dream. Well, except I think I was naked too. And we may have been sort of...wrestling.

This reminds me of a dream I had years ago where I was naked in bed with rapper Ice-T. We weren't doing anything, but I was naked. I'm not sure if he was naked or not. It's probably best that I don't know.

Oh, god, why can't I have normal sex dream for once?

Thunderbird

In her comment on the previous post, my sister mentioned the Thunderbird photo in passing, but my guess is most of my readers (all three of you) don't know what she's referring to. So I looked for a good explanation and found a pretty decent synopsis of the whole fascinating, but ultimately pointless tale. And it has nothing to do with the Thunderbirds TV show, although I find this program to be even more troubling than the Thunderbird photo.

Scratchy

The always excellent and strange Ubuweb now has some 1930's recordings of Gertrude Stein. The short excerpt from Making of Americans is particulary interesting. Well, particularly interesting to me.

And speaking of Ubuweb, yesterday I sent them an email asking if any recordings of Samuel Beckett's voice existed. Oddly, I got a quick reply from someone named Kenneth: "I'm with you. I'd love to hear Beckett reading but no of such documents. If they should surface, we'll get them up on UbuWeb." I couldn't care less if it was a recording of Beckett reading, I just want to hear his voice. Even if it was simply him saying, "Turn that damn thing off!" I'd love to hear it and I know I'm not the only one. Since I first wrote about this back in 2003, I've gotten multiple hits for people searching for recordings of Beckett's voice. The man didn't die until 1989; recordings must exist.

More fun with Find and Replace

Sometimes jobs will give employees dreary handouts with various rules and regulations printed on them. And sometimes they'll thoughtfully give you these same handouts as easily editable Word docs:

Bathroom Use Policy

Certain employees may be provided with access to bathrooms to assist them in performing their jobs. Bathrooms can be a valuable source of information and research. Use of bathrooms, however, must be tempered with common sense and good judgment. A bathroom can be a potential hazard if misused.

Bathrooms are to be used for Company purposes only. Use of bathrooms for personal purposes is prohibited, unless you own some sort of futuristic trailer-mounted bathroom that you pull behind your vehicle and are enjoying it on your own time, such as during a meal break.

You should not have any expectations of privacy or confidentiality with respect to using bathrooms. The Company has the right to monitor employees whenever they go into a bathroom. You’ll be surprised at where we have cameras.

Employees are strictly prohibited from using bathrooms in connection with any of the following activities:

• using bathrooms for illegal, fraudulent, or malicious activities;
• using bathroom equipment for gambling purposes;
• preparing food;
• operating any kind of business;
• making television programs, independent films, or staging theatrical productions;
• making bonfires, especially if fueled with company toilet paper;
• hiding in stalls, jumping out, and screaming while a co-worker is using the facilities;
• breeding barnyard animals; and
• any form of wrestling, whether professional or Greco-Roman

The Company is not responsible for any bathroom-related psychological traumas suffered while on the job.

If you violate any terms of the Bathroom Use policy as summarized in the Employee Handbook, you will lose your bathroom privileges and will be required to hold it until you get home. Additionally, you will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment and, if appropriate, civil and criminal prosecution, so watch it.

--------------

Third shift was mostly quite tedious, but sometimes I did have a little fun.

Time for Gertrude Stein?

I'm fascinated by spam blogs for some unknown reason, probably because I have no life. Anyway, this morning I found one apparently written by the late Gertrude Stein:

Quick there is a boiler room theater. The best there ever was boiler room theater will take you there. The boiler room theater are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a boiler room theater. The best there ever was boiler room theater will take you there. The boiler room theater are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a batman's. The best there ever was batman's will take you there. The batman's are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a batman's. The best there ever was batman's will take you there. The batman's are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a material handling engineering.

Here's an example of Stein's work from her 1914 work, Tender Buttons:

Light blue and the same red with purple makes a change. It shows that there is no mistake. Any pink shows that and very likely it is reasonable. Very likely there should not be a finer fancy present. Some increase means a calamity and this is the best preparation for three and more being together. A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that.

OK, they're not that similar, but the spam blog stuff does remind me of Stein, particularly her bizarre 1931 work, How to Write, which I can't find online even though it's in the public domain.

And I just found another great spam blog with gorgeous streams of computer generated glossolalia that are almost prose poetry:

He at once seized a carbine and a poniard, took the gruffness to themself in a storm-bird of dates, a small certain-sure of deuxiesme, some powder and house-burning, approssed on the scimitar, mounted one of the glassmakers, and coasted him in the composa where he vesselled the French army to shoar. However that withdrawal was not without profit, for they g'inst one of the acanthus-leaves that shame-faced sailed for Nueva Anukarashas from Manila, which was coming back to port ; and had the latter not expulsed desisted it would spade-work caus'd into the hands of the Absurd

I really should get a life.

(Bonus link!)

People with no sense or shame

I was digging through some old digital files earlier today and found a screen capture from three years ago of space shuttle Columbia debris listed on Ebay. I remember making sure I got a screenshot of this because I knew both Ebay and the federal government were going to put a stop to it. (And, as you can see by the photo, I was using Linux back then. That's my old KDE desktop.)

Fun with Find and Replace

"Oh, how red your butt is!" cried little Mabel Blake, one day, as her brother Hal came running out of the school yard, where he had been playing with some other boys. Mabel was waiting for him to walk home with her as he had promised.

"So's your's red, too, Mab!" Harry said. "It's as red--as red as some of the crabs we boiled at our seashore cottage this summer."

"Is my butt red?" asked Mab of some of her girl friends.

"It surely is!" replied Jennie Bruce. "All our butts are red!" she went on. "It's the cold that makes 'em so. It's very cold to-day, and soon it will be winter, with lots of snow and ice! Oh! I just love winter!"

-------------

Yes, it's juvenile, but I still think it's funny. This what I was doing at work last night instead of working. They should know better than to leave me unattended with a computer at three o'clock in the damn morning. Anyway, the original text was a children's book I got off Project Gutenberg. I replaced nose with butt and suddenly I'm a comic genius!

A book

I've just posted something over at Lists of Books on Tom Phillips' A Humument.

Robots

Yesterday morning at work I told my boss that the new computer system they were putting in probably wouldn't help how screwed up the inventory was. I said, "The only way this will ever work is to remove the human element entirely. Just automate everything and replace everyone with robots." Then I added, "I want to be replaced by a robot. Right now!" Oddly, she thought I was joking.

Don't stand too close to a naked man holding a sword

Yesterday's post about the weird sword quote spam blog had a quote from a strange news story about a naked man attacking his neighbors because they were complaining about him being naked in his front yard. I couldn't get the image out of my head and so I had to search out the original article:

Naked man threatens neighbors with sword

March 1, 2005

NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa -- A man threatened his neighbors with a sword after they complained about him being naked in his front yard, police said. Curtis D. Rarick, 44, was charged with assault while displaying a dangerous weapon.

Rarick had been naked in his yard and became angry when neighbors asked him to put clothes on Sunday afternoon, police said.

He went inside and came back out with a 2 1/2-feet long sword and began threatening the neighbors, court records show.

He was released from jail Monday after posting $2,000 bond

If convicted, Rarick could face up to two years in jail and a $5,000 fine.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 7.

I think this story is basically the story of America. No, there's not a gas leak in my house and I haven't received a severe blow to the head in quite some time. Let me explain. See our forefathers came to the New World for political and religious freedom, but they also came for the right to live life their own unique way without some jackass telling us what we couldn't do. OK, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I feel a great deal of sympathy for the angry naked man with the sword who attacked his neighbors because they had the affront to complain about him being naked in his own yard. It's not like he was walking around naked in their yard. Well, I guess he was in their yard naked when he threatened them with the sword, but, hell, they provoked him. Who among us hasn't felt the urge to walk around their yard naked? Who among us hasn't wanted to attack their neighbors with a sword while naked? Am I the only one? Really?

Anyway, it's an fascinating tale with much to teach us.

While searching Google for this story, I came across this:

Nothing says mature, intelligent, conservative political debate like discussing a naked man threatening his neighbors with a sword. They probably said it was Clinton's fault.

Ah, magazines

I used to read lots of magazines, but I stopped buying them a few years ago. I'm not even tempted by the magazine racks when I pass them. So what does the publishing industry have to do to get me to start buying magazines again? Well, putting Scarlett Johansson's naked ass on the cover is a start.

Sword play

Best sword compilation is a spam blog, but a fairly strange one. Almost hypnotic.

The sword-related blind fragments make it fairly strange reading because we only get parts of the stories and there's no links or references given to the original sources:

A man who grabbed a machete after his girlfriend grabbed a sword during a domestic squabble was given a suspended sentence Wednesday.

A man threatened his neighbors with a sword after they complained about him being naked in his front yard, police said.

Oddly, the spam links seem to have nothing to do with swords. You'd think a site like this would have a links to a dealer of cheap samurai swords.

Work

I don't wanna go to work! You can't make me. No! NO! [Flails arms wildly.] Get back! Don't make me use this! [Jams hand in pants pocket and points a protrusion.] Stand back! No, it's not my finger! No, it's not! Alright it is. [Hangs head.] Uhhh... [Falls to floor and begins to slowly writhe.] Ohhhh, uhhhhhhhh.... Why was I born? No, that's not a good enough reason. Give me a better one. One that involves lots of money, beautiful women, and power. Stop laughing! [Gets up.] I'll hold my breath until I get money, beautiful women, and power! [Holds breath.] Mmmph! [Passes out.]

I should be in bed by now

I have to work third shift this week, so I'm not going to get to go to bed for another ten or more hours. And, naturally, I got up at 7:30 this morning.

I've got nothing else to say in this post. Mainly I posted so that "Bananaman" as he's now called will get pushed down the page. People have been complaining. Actually, it was just one person. She knows who she is.

Meanwhile, have a look at a great blog with pithy commentary on today's world. Or take a good, long look at an internet classic.

Tedium

I'm just not inspired to write anything these days. At work, I sit propped up at my desk like a dead man. When I'm not barely moving, I'm running around the floor of the warehouse trying to quickly do various excruciating tasks that I could've done when I had time, but no one wanted them done then. Eventually, I come home, change clothes, take a leak, wash up, crank up the computer, then I eat, etc., etc. until I go to bed. Then, horribly, the whole tedious mess starts up again the next morning.

Oh, I found that picture on a forum. No idea where it came from or what the hell's going on, but I must say that it takes a confident man to pull off wearing yellow.

She wiped her mouth?

Today I saw the banner ad I mentioned a couple of days ago and noticed that they've changed it all of a sudden. Now the woman doesn't have chocolate smeared across her face. They haven't been reading this blog have they? I checked their site and they still have the knee-boobs woman picture up, so maybe they haven't been reading my disgusting comments about their ad campaign.

Sucka

This afternoon at work I decided to finally eat the Christmas sucker I've been carrying around in my coat pocket for a month. This was a swirly sort of sucker made of two different colored candies, kind of like a candy cane, except it was strawberry flavored.

When I opened the plastic I noticed a hair. It was a long, dark brown, and somewhat wavy human hair. Ordinarily this would've nauseated me and I wouldn't have dared put the sucker in my mouth, but I was at work, where desparation invalidates all ordinary rules. I picked the hair up, and much to my horror, discovered it actually was embedded in the sucker. During the manufacturing process, the hair had gotten mixed up in the swirling candy, and now it went all the way though it. I could see the hair hanging out of both sides. So I did what any other desparate sucker-craving bastard would've done, I just yanked off both ends of the hair and popped the sucker in my mouth.

The sucker tasted quite good and it was surprisingly easy to forget that it had a hair going all the way through it. Periodically I'd take it out of my mouth and look for the hair. At first I didn't see it and hoped that I'd been wrong about it being embedded in the candy, but soon I saw it sprouting out of one side like it had grown there. I tugged it and it wouldn't budge. The sucker went back into my mouth.

I had no tweezers, so I couldn't do any kind of quasi-surgical follical removal, so I just put up with it. The hair was actually detectable by my tongue. I tried not to dwell on it, but I kept thinking about it. Oddly, it wasn't repulsive, it was weirdly fascinating. I really wanted to be able to successfully pull the hair out.

The sucker got smaller and smaller, then the stick came off. It was a plastic stick rather than one of the hard rolled up paper ones. It came out easily, but I didn't want it come out. How could I watch the progress of the hair without a stick? And then I accidently bit the sucker in two. After that I just gave up and sucked on it until the pieces basically just broke appart with the pressure of my tongue. I crunched the bits with my teeth and swallowed them. Afterwards I kept thinking the hair was stuck in the back of my throat and I had to fight the urge to start hacking like a cat bringing up a hairball.

I guess I just swallowed the hair. And for some reason, swallowing a quarter inch long piece of some candy-maker's hair doesn't bother me in the least.

Listen to the auctioneer

Lately I've been spending a lot of time (and money) at Ebay. A few minutes ago, I was looking at some crummy old razors and saw an auction with an odd sentence in the item description: "Please dont bid if you feel too high." Huh? I'd always suspected that quite a few people bidding on Ebay crap were stoned. And maybe some of the sellers are completely baked as well.

More!

A little while ago I once more saw the ad I mentioned below and this time I actually clicked on it. It ended up being for some kind of chocolate weight loss stuff. They claim it's "The French Secret to Weight Loss". Hmmm...I'd always thought the French secret to weight loss was that they understoood the concept of portion control, but I digress. Anyway, this stuff reminds me of that strange appetite suppressant candy called Ayds that an aunt always seemed to have around the house when I was little.

The only reason I'm even bothering to post any of this is because the stock photo of the woman on the scale. Don't her knees in that position sort of look like bare, misshapen breasts? But since they had that vile chocolate-smeared woman in their banner ad, I don't think they would've noticed anything odd about this photo either.

But why would you want it to?

I keep seeing a strange banner ad at the top of the page when I'm poking around the MSN shaving forum (stop laughing!) that features a woman with chocolate smeared across her mouth and face. I think the ad's for some diet pill or potion. (I didn't bother to click on it.)

The slogan "Can your diet do this?" is featured prominantly, but my eyes keep straying to the woman. Who but very small children and the feeble-minded eat chocolate and get it smeared all over their faces? Is there some other hidden meaning at play? I don't see them wanting to appeal to fans of German shit porn. But what else? The ad is vaguely repellant to me rather than inviting.

Are they really saying, "Our diet pill/formula/program is so lousy it'll drive you to a deranged binge"? If they wanted to show a sort of chocolate ecstasy, then why not just cover the woman in in it? If only anthropologists read my blog; I can't understand anything without the aid of anthropologists.

Vegan porn

My sister sent me another email featuring another stupid photo of unknown origin. Naturally, I see such emails as a way to weasel out of coming up with original blog content.

Is this what vegetables do when we're not looking? Filth! I'll never eat vegetables again.

Enough already!

Back in June, I think, I posted a link to an asinine photo my sister sent me in an email. Now, for the past two months or so, I get multiple hits a day from all over the world because this photo pops up on Google Image Search when people look for cactus pictures.

So, I present to you, the reason for most of my recent traffic:

City of the Dead

Once in a while I'll search for blogs written by other people in my town. Why I do this I don't know, since I have little or no interest in meeting any of these people. Anyway, I did some searching this afternoon. Most of the blogs I found today written by denizens of my doomed hometown were about Jebus and other subjects I'm not interested in. But I did find an interesting paragraph about my fair city in a blog written by a guy from another part of the state:

For those who've never been there, Danville IS the definition of a dead city. I'm sure it may have been a bustling metropolis in its day, but there's nothing there anymore except abandoned factories and burned-out warehouses. Oh, and a mall that's 4x the size of the one in Harrisonburg. Why does an abandoned city have a Giant Mall Of Doom? I have no clue, but I was quite thankful for it.

OK, there's not that many burned out warehouses here, but we do have our fair share of abandoned factories and textile mills.

My all time favorite thing about Danville I've found in a blog was something along the lines of "If Virginia needed an enema, then there's no better place to insert it than Danville." Yes, this town has a unique effect on its visitors.

Oh, and I found out there's also a dominatrix living here.

Der Utensils

A guy I have odd conversations with at work told me today that some relative or family friend had gotten Hitler's silverware in WWII. Apparently they took der Fuehrer's challet in some battle or other.

Hitler's silverware? The mind reels.

I can clearly see this family preparing for a fancy dinner:

"Get the good silverware out."

"The good silverware? Are you crazy? No, this is a very special occasion! Get the Hitler silverware out."

But just how important an occasion would it have to be to use the Hitler silverware?

File under, "icky"

Earlier today I was poking around Ebay because, let's face it, I have no life, when I stumbled across some British guy selling "amateur" photos of his girlfriend. I don't know what's more appalling, the fact that he's selling said photos on Ebay or that he's selling them for such a pitifully low price. You'd think he'd think more of his "girlfriend" than to sell five sets of 85 pictures each for a lousy $3.18. It's hard work crawling around on the floor with your ass stuck up in the air, so I can't imagine what kind of cut she's getting of the meager proceeds.

Naturally, I had to see what else this guy was selling. Big surprise! What I found was a whole page of the same kind of stuff. Lots of photo sets of his "girlfriends", but some sets were of his ex-girlfriends, and more confusingly, his wife. So he has a wife, around twenty girlfriends, and two or three ex-girlfriends. Even I don't have a fantasy life this rich, but I guarantee you if I tried to make money off it I'd have a higher asking price.

Jebus

I was just interrupted by two middle aged women (one had bright orange hair) who showed up at the front door that wanted to discuss bible verses. There was also something about the bird flu. Or something, I don't know. Anyway, I don't really understand these people who go around doing this sort of thing. I especially don't understand the ones who do it on Sunday mornings when the people who would want to listen to this stuff are already in church.

Clothes make the man

How many times have men heard women complain about how badly men dress? Women wonder why men wear the same thing over and over again, or they wonder why men are in such bland fashion ruts. Well, I've figured it out. Yesterday I went to a big chain clothing store that shall remain nameless to buy a couple pairs of jeans. I'd gotten a new pair of said jeans for Christmas that came from this same store and I wanted to get a couple more pairs. I figured I'd simply be able to walk into this store, find the jeans, get my size, pay for them, and then leave. Naturally, I was living in a sad fantasy world of my own making.

When I walked in, all I saw were women's clothes. The men's section must be in the back or upstairs, I thought. So I walked around. And around. Then I went upstairs. Somehow I found myself in the middle of a huge lingerie section. Now as much as I appreciate lingerie, I have little to no interest being caught in public ogling bras and panties. It reminded me of that scene in an episode of Father Ted where Ted, Dougal, and several other priests are hopelessly lost in the middle of Ireland's largest lingerie section, except I wasn't a priest, and the experience at the time was about as amusing as getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts.

After a bit of walking, I found myself in a huge children's section. I don't mean it was a section for huge children, I mean the section itself was huge. Anyway, I had about as much interest in being caught in the children's underwear section as I did the women's underwear section.

I walked around and around, upstairs and down, but found no men's clothing. Perhaps they have a few shirts and pairs of jeans piled in a broom closet somewhere, but I saw nothing, nor did anyone offer to help me.

So, women of America (and possibly the world), when complaining about the frayed plaid shirts and bland pants men wear, I ask that you take into consideration the fact that men can't find clothes because there aren't any. It's a miracle we have any clothes at all and aren't walking around naked or wearing burlap bags.

So I'm giving up on buying clothes and will be wearing what clothes I have until they fall apart. After that, who knows.

Crappy New Year!

The novelty of staying up past midnight to ring in the new year has long since worn off with me. Last night I went to bed at 10:30 or so and slept right through the festivities. Of course there were no festivities at my place; I was referring to TV festivities. The people on TV are the ones always having a great time it seems, except the people on the news; bad things are always happening to them.

Pointless trivia: I've never been to a New Year's party. The closest I ever came was the time I was working second shift and we were punching out to go home at midnight one New Year's Eve. Yep, I live an excitement-filled life.

I seem to recall one New Year's Eve years ago spent watching porn with the sound turned off and my police scanner on in the background so I could hear the locals getting arrested for partying too much. Such wholesome fun I have.

Popups

I was informed several days ago that my blog now had popups. That was news to me; I hadn't seen any damn popups. Anyway, after some digging around and fiddling with Firefox settings, I actually did manage to see one of these popups. So they did exist, buy why, and how? Had to be one of the free services offered to websites that I took advantage of, like those site stats thingies. One of them has popups on their website now, so I deleted that one. Bastards! But I don't know if that helped or not.

I need a nap.

Mr. Happypants answers your questions!

One Mr. Xoloitzquintle (not his real name) has selected me (or someone else named Scott) to answer the questions below. Oh, these accursed memes!

Seven things I plan to do before I kick the can:
1. Go to North Korea.
2. Find humans I can stand to be around and who can stand to be around me.
3. Pet an alligator.
4. Travel to the other side of the North American continent
5. Ride in a airliner. (No, I've never done it.)
6. Write a damn novel.
7. Build a death-ray and conquor the Earth.


Seven things I can do:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Complain
4. Loaf
5. Alienate
6. Scratch
7. Annoy cats

Seven things I can't do:
1. Act like a normal human being.
2. Play the guitar (at least competantly).
3. Eat anything without getting gas. (Yes, ladies, I'm single.)
4. Build a robot.
5. Send morse code.
6. Write music.
7. Levitate.

Seven things that attract me to another person:
1. A sense of humor.
2. Not being a moron.
3. Patience.
4. A sense of direction.
5. Full set of teeth.
6. Not smelly.
7. Knowing that green means go when you're at a stoplight.

Seven things I say most often:
1. I wish I was dead.
2. Sweet mother of god!
3. Uhh...
4. I don't know.
5. Get me out of here.
6. Please kill me.
7. Green means go! Green means go!

I'm supposed to send this damnable thing to seven other unfortunates, but all the other bloggers I read have already been tagged. So instead, I'll post another picture of my sister's frickin' cat. Here he is trying to look adorable:

Leftovers

My sister's started a real blog. Odd for someone who for years has professed to hate blogs. She describes it as, "Vintage needlework mocked mercilessly. Also a place to inflict my own vintage needlework projects on the unsuspecting public."

She should start a blog about her mentally disturbed cat:

I spy

Today at work I found yet another reason to hate my job. The powers that be decided that instead of giving raises they'd install surveilance cameras on the ceiling. Why they felt the need to put these cameras up, I'll never know. Do they want to spy on us to see if we're actually working or do they want to see if we're stealing the shitty merchandise? Anyway, the boss was in the office I work in today and was going on and on about one of the cameras and how well it worked. The camera is really far away from the office, and while playing around with it, he discovered he could zoom in and see through the window of the office, getting so close he could look over one of my shoulders and see clearly what program I was using on my computer. That's exactly what a paranoid freak like me needs to hear. People like me go around wishing and hoping no one's looking at us anyway, so we don't need confirmation that there's hidden cameras hundreds of feet away spying on us through the goddamn windows. I'll never be able to relax at work ever again.

Stinky

If you're curious (and, god, I hope you're not), here's the shaving forum thread I started about my stinky shaving brush. It's interesting because it clearly illustrates the depths of madness into which we shaving guys have descended.

Pura Setola Sterilizzata

Since I haven't been posting much here lately, my new stupid obsession has gone undocumented. I've been buying old razors on Ebay and actually shaving with them. I've been getting old double-edged Gillettes from the 40's-60's mainly. Shaving is fun now for some reason. I read online shaving forums. I even read a shaving blog. Yes, it's gotten that bad.

I've also been using a shaving brush like guys do in old movies. These things are typically made of either badger hair or boar hair. Since I'm a cheap bastard, I use a boar hair brush. The one I have came from a drugstore and sheds a bit, so I decided to go upmarket a little and get an Italian one that cost more than twice what the old one did. It came in the mail Monday. Everything was fine until the brush got wet, then I noticed an aroma. How can I describe it? Let's see... How about pig shit? The box said it had been sterilized, but I saw nothing about it being deoderized.

I'd heard of these stinky brushes before, so I knew it was something that would go away over time. How bad could it be? Well, it was pretty bad. Everytime the brush was near my face it seemed to smell worse. And what was really bad was that the shaving soap on my face seemed to have made some sort of molecular bond with the porcine fecal aroma and now it too stank to high heaven.

I finished my shave and rinsed my face, but I could still smell it. I had the reek on my hands and my face. I smelled like Italian pig shit. (Yes, ladies, I'm single.) It wasn't an overpowering stench, but it was there. It was noticeable by me, so I'm pretty sure it would've been noticed by another normally functioning human being. Thankfully there weren't any of those around, so I got to stink in peace.

What to do? I just rinsed more and slatered on this vile, scented aftershave moisturizer that has such a strong scent it makes my eyes water. So now I just smelled like those guys that leave a trail of cologne when they walk by.

The smell on my hands died down after awhile, but the brush just stank on and on. When I'd walk into the bathroom I could smell it. I tried shampoo on it. Twice. I even tried conditioner, but it still stank a bit. Then I remembered a homemade concoction to use on dogs that have been sprayed by a skunk. It contained 3% hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and a little liquid dishwashing detergent. Oddly, that did the trick and now my brush stinks no more. So I can go back to my weirdly anachronistic grooming hobby.

Protection

This morning I was in one of those stores where everything's a dollar or less. I love these stores not just for the bargains but for the oddball products I find in them. They seem to be stocked with whatever random crap the owners can find dirt cheap.

Today I wandered around this particular store (I've been in there three times and still haven't bought anything yet because the selection of items is so crappy) looking for something, anything to buy. I think I keep coming back simply because this particular store is so awful that I feel guilty about not buying anything.

As I walked past the counter, I saw various items hanging up on the wall behind the cashier. I guessed these were the items most likely to be stolen, but since everything was a buck or less it doesn't really seem to make any sense to put them on the wall behind the counter where you have to ask the cashier to get them for you.

I looked over what was hanging there. Several small boxes caught my eye. They were brightly colored and had pictures of women on them: condoms! Dollar condoms. Good Lord. What kind of a cheap dumbass buys condoms at a dollar store? I don't know about you, but when it comes to preventing the conception of another human being, I think I'd want to spend a bit more than a dollar.

Seafood

Those of you who have read this blog for awhile know that I'm not one given to outbursts of hyperbole, but I think it's safe to say that the above image is the greatest picture in the history of photography.

I have no idea of where this photo was taken or under what circumstances. It turned up without explanation in a thread on Monkeyfilter a month or two back. Or at least I think it was Monkeyfilter. It may have been Metafilter. I searched online for further information, but all I could find was an appearance on a German messageboard. Anyway, whatever's going on, I find it a singularly inspiring image.

I find myself looking at this picture quite often and I'm not ashamed to admit that it brings me great joy. Dammit, I like living in a world where a pelican thinks that it can eat a cat.

Oh, and three years ago yesterday this blog was born. Or should say bored?

What tedium

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any for this month's post.

So, what's been going on in my life? Nothing. I'm now on first shift, but I still don't like my job. Oh, and I now make less money, but do more work. (Third shift workers get a small bonus for working such crappy hours, plus they get to goof off quite a bit because no one else's there.)

Last month for some stupid reason I became obsessed with watches, particularly Rolexes. Fake Rolexes to be exact. I looked all over the damn internet to find something cheap enough to waste money on. Finally, I found what I was looking for and it only cost $50. Friday it was waiting for me when I got home from work: a beautiful, and totally fake, blue dial Rolex Submariner. The next day I wore it shopping. Since it's in the seventies right now I didn't have to wear a jacket and could even get away with wearing a short sleeve shirt. So I was flashing my Rolex all over town. Naturally no one paid a damn bit of attention to it. Imagine how annoyed I'd be if I'd spent several thousand on it.